11/02/23 - StyxQuest v1.3 - Fixing the South

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Valentine's Day is near, and there is nothing romantic to showcase - not yet, anyways. I've been busy working on things specific to the southern half of the world.
Firstly! Sintown, the first area that gives you a hands-on experience with using Sins. Below are the layouts for the town and the interiors:

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One of the main concerns was that despite being called a town, there was nothing to suggest that it was a town at all; the houses were all caves with little personality to them, inside and out! It was a claustrophobic area overall.
The easiest way to resolve this was by making structures that tied into the personality or Sin of each demon that lives there: an artist, a romantic, a critic, a merchant, a simple being and someone with more ego than talent. Props such as street lights will be added in-game.

So what comes after the player's visit to Sintown? Crossing the border between the South and North. The new maps retain most of the original designs, but with more visual polish and size. Below are some more comparisons:

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There wasn't much to be added this time compared to Sintown. All there is to say about the Border maps is that they're more in-line with the rest of the maps in terms of style and colour palette.

Even the protagonist is not immune from much-needed updating. Styx's talksprites looked okay at first glance, but they looked sloppy compared to later drawings of them. And also the quality of the scans could have been better. An update was needed badly.

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Left - The original talksprites for Styx.
Right - The new talksprites - with two new ones added for a greater range of emotion and personality.

The last piece of significant progress that I can show is a new area. What is its purpose? You'll be able to find out if you make significant progress in your playthrough.

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It's not a large update, that much is clear. Things have been busy and job-hunting within animation has been as difficult as ever. But on a positive note, this game will be shown off at a small convention in April! I have to make a new trailer video for it to reflect the progress being made, and also sort out designs for some stickers. If that second part goes well, then maybe I'll sell them on a site such as Redbubble.

List of things to work on:

Double-check Sanguine Shores South mapping (I predict we'll hit double-digit devlogs before it's double-checked)
Add more enemies to Sanguine Shores South (has remained untouched since last post)
Re-event Sintown and Border areas
Fix animations for new items
Remake old maps (low priority, but it's likely at least one will be shown off next update)
Make a new trailer video (begin work in late March)
Test combat (low priority)

Plans are in motion. I really hope that 1.3 will be the update that garners the most attention.